Circumstantial
by Sarah1281
Summary: Parliament may be destroyed and a revolution beginning, but the fact remains that Evey Hammond is a wanted fugitive standing next to a Detective Chief Inspector who feels that he's waited long enough for answers. If only she WAS in as deep as he thought.


Circumstantial

Disclaimer: I do not own V for Vendetta.

Evey watched the site of the explosion long after things had finally died down and she had the feeling that she wasn't the only one. She could almost still see the fireworks illuminating the night sky, almost hear the 1812 overture ringing out in joyous celebration.

She wasn't quite sure what this night would ultimately mean or how many had heeded V's call to come but she had a good feeling about this. The people had been pushed to their limits and they'd finally been given a means to push back. _She_ had finally been given a means to push back and it was all thanks to V. When it came down to it, little Evey Hammond who had never fought a day in her life had been the one to destroy Parliament and to symbolize the coming of the revolution.

It was the best gift in the world and she wasn't sure that she would have been able to explain to V just what it meant to her, even had he not died. And for all that he spoke of being a relic of the old age and thus not 'fit' to usher in a new one, she knew that if she hadn't kept her promise and returned that evening then he would have been the one to send that train off.

Beside her, Detective Chief Inspector Finch had stopped studying the sky and had started examining _her_. It was only natural, she supposed. The excitement had died down for now, at least where they were, and the rubble remains of the building would still be there in the morning. It was far less likely that she would be.

"You must have been looking for me for a long time, Inspector. You have questions," Evey said simply. She had only seen him once when she was running away but as far as he could tell, his party membership didn't make him a monster. V hadn't killed him like he'd killed all the others and that was as good a vote of confidence as any. He hadn't been the sort of man who believed in restraint, after all.

"You're in deep," Finch said slowly, shifting a little now that he had moved from furtive scrutiny to an open gaze. "I suspected it the moment I ran your name through our database but I had never imagined it went this deep."

It wasn't so much a question as an invitation to elaborate and Evey did so freely. She had nothing to hide, not anymore, and nothing to regret. "I'm not, actually," she began.

Finch couldn't have looked more skeptical if he tried, the way his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows shot up. "There are a great many people who just watched a certain explosion who would say otherwise."

"It is rather damning," Evey agreed breezily. "But it's nothing like you think."

"I'd be most interested to know how you know what I think," Finch replied.

"I can connect the dots as well as you can, Inspector, and I know how it looks," Evey said seriously. "You think that I was in league with V."

"You're not?" Finch asked, making no effort to hide his incredulity.

"Well…" Evey trailed off. "It's complicated."

"I have time," Finch said wryly.

"Do you?" Evey asked rhetorically. "I would have thought that the kind of chaos something like this would cause would be exactly the sort of thing a member of our fine police force would need to deal with."

"Between the two of us, I've never been comfortable with crowds," Finch told her. "And there are privileges that come with rank. Besides, with one perpetrator of tonight's events dead and the other standing beside me, I don't think the most zealous of patriots could accuse me of shirking my duty tonight."

Evey cocked her head. "Are you going to be taking me in, Inspector?"

"That depends entirely on what you have to say about tonight," Finch replied honestly.

Evey thought that he probably didn't want to arrest her or else he would have done so and questioned her at the station. He had quite deliberately allowed her to destroy Parliament as well so he might be worried about the truth coming out and it would be at the height of hypocrisy to punish her for it. Not that that would stop some. "Would you believe that the first two times I met V were complete and total coincidences?"

"Must be some coincidences," Finch replied neutrally.

Evey nodded. "It's true. November the fourth of last year was when I first met him. I was trying to make it to the house of Gordon Dietrich when some fingermen stopped me. Being fingermen, they could do whatever they wanted to me and what they wanted was to rape me."

Finch's brow furrowed. "Did you-"

"No," Evey said, cutting him off. "That's when V showed up. He was quite literally just passing by and it took very little effort for him to incapacitate those fingermen and save me."

"If that's true then how did you end up with him at the explosion of the Old Bailey?" Finch asked reasonably.

"He asked me my name and I told him it was Evey. E.V. How could he resist?" she asked rhetorically. "He asked me to accompany him."

"And you did so?" Finch seemed to be having more trouble with the concept that she went along with it than his having invited her.

"Well…yes," Evey told him. "To be honest, when I first met him I thought that he was a crazy person. He had this whole big speech introducing himself that had all these v words that I'd never heard of and he had just taken down two fingermen…I was a little worried about what would happen to me if I didn't humor him and go with him. I was a little worried about what would happen to me if I did."

"We identified you, you know," Finch remarked. "We thought that you were an accomplice of his."

"I suppose that I was, in a way, if only accidentally," Evey mused. "I had no idea what was going to happen until the explosions started. He was going on about the music before it started, which didn't do much for my opinion on his sanity. No, he never did much to improve that."

"Maybe if you'd been another girl then we wouldn't have been so concerned but you know what we found in your history," Finch said slowly.

Evey nodded. "A brother at St. Mary's, two dead political parents, raised by the Juvenile Reclamation Project. It's only natural for you to start looking for something that wasn't there."

"And he did show up when you were in trouble," Finch reminded her.

"That wasn't why he did it," Evey insisted. "If anything, your presence there only made his job more difficult. He didn't know I worked at the BTN."

"Not yet but he did use your pass to kill Lewis Prothero," Finch pointed out.

Evey frowned. She had accepted that killing Prothero was probably for the best but she was still unhappy that he'd just taken her pass without her consent and dragged her further into that mess. She might never be allowed to be Evey Hammond again. That thought didn't bother her nearly as much as it would have once. There wasn't much from her former life worth keeping, though she was fond of her name. Her surname came from her parents and her first name tied her to V. As it was, it was a very satisfactory name. "So I heard."

"That was actually when I first began to doubt that you were as involved as we had first thought," Finch admitted. "Dominic had his gun trained on V, you saved him, and when Dominic knocked you out he just stood there staring down at you. He nearly left you."

Evey's frown deepened; she hadn't known that. Still, she'd done one worse to him when she'd tried to warn that pedophiliac priest that V had come to kill him. "He didn't."

"No, he didn't," Finch agreed readily. "I ought to thank you for that."

"For attacking one of your men?" Evey asked, confused.

"Dominic wasn't the first to train his gun on V," Finch clarified. "Maybe he would have succeeded in killing him and prevented all of this, which may not even have been the best outcome. More than likely, if you hadn't have done what you did then Dominic would be dead right now. A man who can take an entire broadcasting studio hostage singlehandedly is not a man to test your luck against."

"That's really the story of our meeting," Evey told him. "I was out and in trouble one night when he was passing by, he saved me and made me an accessory. The next day I'm in trouble again thanks to him and he happens to decide that Guy Fawkes Day is a good time to address the nation and saves me again."

"If that were the extent of your involvement, you wouldn't be here now," Finch pointed out. "It's been a year. Something must have happened."

"Something did happen," Evey agreed. "V took me to his home. He told me that I'd need to stay down there until today."

Finch drew back. "An entire year trapped alone in whatever hideout he was working out of?"

"That was my reaction," Evey said, a small smile appearing on her face. "It wasn't as bad as all of that, though. It was spacious and there were books everywhere. There was a jukebox and a telly and all sorts of movies. I must have watched the 'Count of Monte Cristo' a dozen times."

"That's the second time you've referenced that movie. Favorite of yours?" Finch asked wryly.

Evey thought about it for a moment before shaking her head. "Not really. I liked it well enough, yes, and it did have a genuine happy ending that was nothing like the book but…that sort of dedication to vengeance just made me sad. V, naturally, couldn't understand that."

"No, I wouldn't imagine that he could," Finch murmured. "So that's where you were this whole time?"

Evey shook her head. "Oh, no. I was only there for a few weeks before I made my escape. You may remember that priest who was murdered. I'm afraid I've forgotten his name myself."

"Father Lilliman, yes, I remember," Finch said, his eyes hardening at the mention. Evey wondered what it was about that that had set him off. She didn't think his pedophilia would be obvious from his death. Was Finch a particularly religious man or had that part come out afterwards, at least for the inspector?

"I had asked V if there was any way that I could help him and I explained about my parents," Evey told him. "I did really want to help, I suppose but what he asked me to do…he wanted to kill Lilliman and he wouldn't tell me why. He had me dress up like some sort of Lolita and wait for him in his room. Apparently he wasn't quite as celibate as he was supposed to be. I…I tried to warn him that V was coming for him. He thought it was some sort of foreplay. When V finally showed up, rescuing me yet again, Lilliman told him that I had warned him. He just looked at me and…I don't know. I was scared. I ran."

"You thought that V would punish you for betraying him," Finch realized.

Evey nodded. "Now, I don't think he would have because he never did, exactly, but I hadn't wanted to be there _anyway_ and I didn't want to take the chance."

"Where did you go?" Finch inquired.

"I went to Gordon," Evey said wistfully. She had already liked him well enough but when he opened his home to her, no questions asked, when she was a highly sought after fugitive he became a hero in her eyes. And eventually, another martyr. Well it would all be worth it, someday. If she was very lucky, it would start to become worth it tonight. "He took me in and kept me safe. Things were okay for awhile. But then...oh, he'd always pushed the boundaries but he misjudged the situation with V."

"I saw that show," Finch informed her. "It was a good show but it wasn't worth a man's life. The Chancellor…he wasn't used to not getting his way and every day V continued to evade us was one more day that he felt he was being made a fool of and one more day that brought us closer to tonight. If he had done almost anything else then it probably would have been okay."

"That was Gordon," Evey said simply. "He came into the room, told me they were there. He told me to hide under the bed and not make a sound. It was so like when my mother had done the same thing for me when they had come for her. This time, I didn't say anything."

"So you escaped," Finch surmised.

Evey winced. "Not exactly. I escaped from the government but V was there."

"This doesn't sound like a good thing," Finch noted.

Evey shrugged. "It is and it isn't. He was a prisoner, once, and it made him strong. I don't know all the details but-"

"I do," Finch interrupted. "Larkhill."

"Larkhill?" Evey repeated inquisitively.

"Would it surprise you in the slightest to learn that our own government was behind St. Mary's and the other places?" Finch asked her.

Evey felt her heart grow cold. St. Mary's had been done on purpose. Everything that had been done since then, in the name of protecting the people, every terrible deed and senseless death…it had all been part of a sinister plot to control them. "No, it wouldn't."

She'd need to process this later, when she was alone. Now as hardly the time so she pushed it to the side as much as she was able to. The government really had taken everything, hadn't they? She wondered if her parents had suspected. Not that they ever would have shared such a terrible truth with her, of course. Not that coddling her had every done any good.

"V was a prisoner and it took his memories and it made him stronger. I had mentioned that I had wanted to be stronger and he was trying to help me," Evey said quietly.

"He imprisoned you," Finch said with quiet realization.

"He tortured me," Evey clarified. "He broke me down and made me build myself up from scratch. He made me a far stronger person than I ever thought I could be and I may never forgive him. Though it is hard to hate a dead man and he made all of this possible. He made me think that the government had me and simulated an entire interrogation process. He shaved my head. He wanted to know where V was. I told him I'd rather die and, at the last second, he told me the truth. Then he let me go."

"What then?" Finch asked, evidently deciding not to press for details about just how long the ordeal had been or what had happened to her in V's attempt to help her.

"Then I found a new place to live and a new job and a new life," Evey informed him. "No one recognized me, not even a friend that I ran into once. I guess that part of it was the hair and part of it was the name but part of it was the fact that I was so very different than the girl that she had known. Before I left, he asked me to come back tonight so he could see me once again. I did."

"And he gave you the train," Finch concluded.

Evey nodded. "We danced and then he showed me the train. He said that it was my decision because his era was ending and mine was just beginning."

"I hope that's true," Finch said softly, then started as if he were surprised that he had even said that out loud.

"So do I," Evey agreed. "Part of me thinks that it can't possibly be true because since when has this world ever genuinely changed for the better? But still…V believed and if there's one thing that I've learned about him this past year it's that he was hardly an optimist. Surely there must be some hope if even someone like him could find it."

"I suppose that we'll see tomorrow and in the days that follow it," Finch said thoughtfully. "No one's heard from Chancellor Sutler or Creedy and if something didn't happen to them then I can't imagine them not being all over this."

"We'll have to take part in the new world-building, you know," Evey said solemnly. "Or else others might see the void left by the old regime and try to take advantage of it to start one of their own."

Finch sighed. "That we will. The next few months are going to be very busy indeed."

They stood there in comfortable silence for a moment.

"Are you going to arrest me, Inspector?" Evey asked finally. She would face prison unflinchingly if she must but she would really rather it not come to that.

Finch was silent for so long that Evey began to wonder if he had even heard her. Finally, he said. "No, no I don't think I will."

"Then what now?" Evey asked, not really expecting him to have an answer because she had none herself. Maybe nobody had any answers anymore. V always had answers but he was dead now and even if he hadn't been this was new territory even for him.

"Now?" Finch repeated. He glanced down at his watch. "I don't know about you but I've had a very trying day. I think I'll go home, get some rest, and pray that London's still standing in the morning."

Evey laughed. "That does sound like quite the plan. To building a better world…tomorrow. Who knows? I might even see you around."

From the look on Finch's face, he clearly had no idea if that would be a good thing or not. In truth, neither did she. But then, wasn't that the point of it all?

The old order had crumbled and the new had yet to begin and until it did anything could happen.

Review Please!


End file.
